On some weekends, my dad would pick me up and we'd go to the public bathhouse. We were lucky enough to have a toilet and a shower in our apartment; most people on our floor had to share an old-style toilet at the end of the long, long hallway. The toilet had a cement floor and cast iron, aerodynamic-looking hole with two knurled footsteps on eiter side for squatting. A lot of people had to go to public baths to wash.
The baths were a fascinating place for me. I grew up with my mother and my grandmother -- there were no men in my immediate family. At the bathhouse we were surrounded by men, naked men of all shapes and sizes. It was terrifying - all the blubber of obese old men, men hairy as apes I saw at the zoo, men with weird skin issues, tatoos, scars... fat, thin, and in-between. And all the horrible, fat cocks -- nothing like my peepee. I tried to act normal and not look. When I grow up, would my cock become horrible too?
And then there was all the water, all sulfury, and steamy. And conversations, often rude.
There were a lot of people, and after steaming and scrubbing each other's backs with scratchy loofas, they would wait to rinse off in the rows of exposed showers. The water was never turned off, and as soon as one stepped out another would step in.
My father and I had a game: we would turn off the hot water and shower in ice-cold water; we had to pretend that the water was wonderfully hot and luxuriate in it. It was very hard not to scream. The next person would step in thinking the water was hot, and get a surprise.
After I got a fungus on my foot, my mom told me I couldn't go there anymore.